1. Reflect on your current assessment practices. How have you been determining what students understand and what they are able to do?
A. Journal Entries: All students have Biology journal which is kept in the classroom at all times. When assigned, students are required to complete a journal entry in a proper format which includes the date, the entry number, the title of assignment, the questions asked and the student responses. Depending on the lesson, I will assign a journal entry to open the lesson which requires students to think about new ideas, make connections, break down misconceptions or serve as a retrieval cue to assess prior knowledge. At other times, I used journals at the end of a lesson or the very beginning of the next class to ask questions (high level thinking questions that they can not find the answers to in a book or notes) in order to assess students to determine that all students understand. These journals are reviewed briefly after each assignment in order to determine which students require additional help on a topic. After a total of 5 journal entries have been recorded, I assign a grade out of 15 points (5 for set up/completeness, 10 pts for quality of responses). It is important to note that I do not use the journals every day a I believe in continuously changing the classroom activity and routine.
B. Higher Level Questioning/Class Dicussions: Whether I am facilitating a lab, activity, jigsaw activity or giving students a brief set of foundational notes, I am continuously generating a series of questions to ask during each lesson. I make sure that when a question is asked, I allow a standard wait time of 5-7 seconds per student. If a student does not respond, I may reword the question in a leading manner to help the student generate some ideas. I encourage students to speak freely and to feel safe giving some sort of response even if it is not correct. There is no shame in trying. If all students are stumped, I allow students to "pair and share" which allows students to ask for help from their classmates. This creates a safe learning environment, allows for peer tutoring but also the opportunity from a teacher's point of view to informally assess all students even those who are not called on immediately as I circulate the room.
C. Lab or Activity Packets & Homework Assignments: My classroom is student-centered. During the unit, I try to keep the amount of notes that I provide to a minimum of 45 minutes broken down over a series of days which gives the students just enough foundation information. My philosophy is to have students create a product or engage in a hands-on activity completed in small, heterogeneous groups. When one of the assignments are completed, we have a class discussion/reflection session based on what they have learned and I collect the material. I do not believe in just checking it for completion as I will not get the quality of work that I expect from my students. I do, however, provide feedback for each and every student. This is graded as a typically on a scale 1-5. Depending on the type of project or activity and depth of knowledge required, I will at times grade the assignment as a quiz grade.
D. Quizes, Projects and Tests: During my time student teaching, I have created a series of short and longer formative assessments including quizzes, tests and projects. At times, I will count a longer activity as a quiz grade. I will often quiz students when there is a longer unit to ensure they understand one topic before moving onto another topic in a longer unit. I have assigned a quarter project which is "at home" work and is lengthy & complex in nature. My tests are always self-generated and include a variety of multiple choice, short answer and essay. In my opinion, my formal assessments vary in DOKs and allow a diversity of learners to succeed by having the opportunity to achieve using different formats. The quizzes are often 10 questions. The tests are typically 25-30 questions maximum. Before each test, I go over my expectations for the type of short/long answer responses to ensure students do not give me the bare minimum and expect to receive a fair grade.
I heartily agree with many of the points of your answers. You should be aware, however that I have corrected more than 10 misspellings on the paragraphs above. When editing text, You should consider using a browser that underlines misspellings as you write, e.g. Firefox. As you know, correct spelling is extremely important for a teacher because it serves for parents as an indicator of overall intelligence and the care you put into your work.
2. Describe the concept(s) that you are trying to assess in these assignments. Include a link to the appropriate GSE(s) on RIScienceTeachers. Be sure to include in your description your definition, examples of what it is, why students have difficulty with this concept, and why it is important that you teach this topic:
Concepts Addressed:
As part of the 10th grade biology curriculum at North Kingstown High School, a unit on microorganisms must be addressed which covers the four different kingdoms: Eubacteria, Archaebacteria, Protista and Fungi. The first concept/topic addressed in the unit was bacteria. The driving questions for this topic were generated by each individual class and were as such:
1. Are bacteria more evolved than more complex organisms such as humans?
2. What roles does bacteria play in our own lives/society (Friend or Foe)?
3. How do humans alter the pace of evolution via natural selection in terms of antibiotic resistance?
Excellent questions.
In order to address these concepts, students had to gain foundational information about the kingdom including the cell structure, role of organelles, and modes of reproduction (Asexual and sexual). In order to do this, students used a variety of sources including their textbook to gather information about bacteria in order to create a story book or comic/cartoon targeted to a fifth grade audience. Students were required to learn new concepts, make connections and synthesize and apply the newly learned information in such a way that a younger audience would be able to comprehend. By doing this, the students were fully engaged in a self-directed learning, project-based learning and peer-tutoring while I facilitated the activity.
Students demonstrate understanding of structure and function-survival requirements by…
1a explaining the relationships between and amongst the specialized structures of the cell and their functions (e.g. transport of materials, energy transfer, protein building, waste disposal, information feedback, and even movement).
1b explaining that most multicellular organisms have specialized cells to survive, while unicellular organisms perform all survival functions. (e.g. nerve cells communicate with other cells, muscle cells contract, unicellular are not specialized).
Students demonstrate an understanding of Natural Selection/ evolution by…
8a illustrating that when an environment changes, the survival advantage /disadvantage of some characteristics may change.
8b distinguish between microevolution (on small scale within a single population –e.g., change in gene frequency within a population) and macroevolution (on a scale that transcends boundaries of a single species – e.g., diversity of all beetle species within the order of insects) and explain how macroevolution accounts for speciation and extinction.
8c recognizing patterns in molecular and fossil evidence, to provide a scientific explanation for Natural Selection and its evolutionary consequences (e.g. survival, adaptation).
Students demonstrate an understanding of how humans are affected by environmental factors and/or heredity by …
9aresearching scientific information to explain how such things as radiation, chemicals, and other factors can cause gene mutations or disease.
9b providing an explanation of how the human species impacts the environment and other organisms (e.g. reducing the amount of the earth’s surface available to those other species, interfering with their food sources, changing the temperature and chemical composition of their habitats, introducing foreign species into their ecosystems, and altering organisms directly through selective breeding and genetic engineering).
Important Information that Students need to Know before addressing these concepts:
DNA is a nucleic acid that contains the code for certain genes which are inherited
The difference between a prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell
The difference between asexual and sexual reproduction
The concept of natural selection (Driven by genetic variation where the traits that are more favorable will be passed down to future generations)
The understanding that evolution is a change in species over time
Why is it important for students to learn about these concepts:
3. (and 7) Describe an informal assessment that you selected, modified, or designed to address this concept. Summarize the instructions you gave your students and Include a link to the informal assessment here as well.
The informal assessment that I designed allowed students to engage in project-based learning by creating a story/picture book or a comic/cartoon for a fifth grade science class who was learning about bacteria. In the story book or comic, students must be able to draw and label a bacteria cell, describe the three different shapes of bacteria cells, describe the function of each organelle by using analogies comparing them to items that a fifth-grader would be familiar with.
Please find the instructions by clicking on this link:
4 (and 8) Create a Formal Assessment. Describe the assessment, including concepts, types of items, and how it was assessed. Include a link to the copy of the assessment as well.
Concepts being addressed:
How to read and understand graph analysis
Test Format- 18 questions total
10 Multiple Choice Questions (5 pts Each)
1 Graph Interpretation (8 pts)
6 Multi-part short response questions (42 pts total-each weighed separately)
Note: Its important to note that I purposely reduced the number of multiple choice questions so students could concentrate on their short answer responses given that some classes only had 45 minutes to take this chapter test.
9. For your information assessment, upload scans of work of three or four students. The work of each student should be on a different page. At the bottom of each students page, you should describe the level of student understanding, e.g. high, average, low and describe how it is indicated in its answers.
It would have been interesting to read your explanation of how you assessed each example and they taught you about your teaching.
10. For you formal assessment, describe how you think it addressed the concepts you were trying to assess? How did you modify the assessment to address learning differences or special needs?
During each lesson through out the unit, I immediately created several test questions based on the actual lesson, class discussion and length we covered a topic. When the unit was complete, I had a bank of test questions that varied between DOK 1- DOK 4 high level thinking questions where students had to compare/contrast, distinguish between a virus and bacteria cell in order to get a question correct, think back through several projects including the bacteria story book, bacteria uses presentation, Diagnosing a patient (Virus) project, and antibiotic resistance lab. I am pleased with the assessment and feel that although a shorter test, it covers the material that I think is most relevant for students.
This test was designed for my three honors level classes. No handwritten modifications were necessary, however, for my college-prep biology class, I had converted some of the short answer questions into multiple choice as we didn't go into such depth on topics like antibiotic resistance as I had lost 1 full class period due to in school activities being held during that period.
I like your strategy of using the same test for both levels. It would be interesting for you to compare the box and whiskers plot of the two levels of students to see if the populations are truly distinct.
III. Analysis / Reflection
11. Use both the informal and formal assessments to describe what you learned about what your students understand about these concepts. Use specific examples from both the informal and formal assessment to illustrate your points. What can your students do now that they could not before, and what do they still need to learn?
By watching my students complete these tasks in combination with grading the assessments, I have learned several things from my students. First when given the informal assessment, I got a lot of complaints and groaning about "Why do we have to do this, I cant do this, I don't get what I am suppose to do" but once the students got into the story book activity, they thoroughly enjoyed it. All students used unique sets of analogies to describe the organelles or bacteria along with the processes of reproduction. Students had relied on the previous knowledge from learning about some of the organelles when talking about an animal cell during the first quarter.
One concept that most students including the average and high performing student struggled with is that when a bacteria cells uses conjugation to reproduce, they assumed that once the genetic material was exchanged through the pillus, a new bacteria cell formed much like human sexual reproduction. However, after reviewing these assessments, I was able to clarify and show a 2 minute clip under a scope of bacterial conjugation so they would understand that conjugation does not necessarily result in the formation of a new bacteria cell but rather the bacteria cells have greater genetic diversity due to the exchange of information which allows them to adapt and become more resistant.
This is a good example of the importance of formative assessment.
Through the informal assessment, students were able to practice and improve the skill of making connections between new content material and information they are already familiar with. For example, they learned about the three shapes of bacteria: Cocci (Round), Baccillis (Rod) and Sprillum (Sprial) which they compared to the shape of pasta as well as other common objects.
It is important to note that after this activity and during the labs that followed, students would say "I know this stuff better than anything else because I put the concepts into words that I would understand." This held true for the formal assessment as the test grades had increased on average by 12 points. Whether the test format was different or students were more interested in the topic as it may be more relevant than others, there was still a huge improvement that I am pleased with.
Good.
In the formal assessment, students proved that they were able to clearly distinguish between a virus and bacteria through methods of treatment, structure and composition. Furthermore, students proved to successfully read a graph and make inferences based on the given information. Most importantly, students proved to have learned how to take the concepts they learned about through activities and labs, critically think and transfer that information into a well supported argument (i.e. bacteria cells are more evolved than humans).
It looks like this project/test allowed you to use your own knowledge of and interest in evolution. Nicely done.
Students still have to improve their skill of writing out cohesive (coherent?) responses during a short-answer test. Students are apt to write an answer quickly based on what pops into their brains, however, if they had just taken the time to outline what they wanted to write to put together a detailed paragraph or two answering the questions and giving examples, all student responses could have been well-written aside from the to twenty students out of all three classes.
How will you address this in your future classes?
12.OMIT PER ASSIGNMENT
13. For your formal assessment only, select one student characteristic, e.g. ability, gender, age, etc) and compare the relative performance of each group. Hint: Use box and whiskers plots to compare the two groups. What do you conclude from this comparison? Why?
For the formal assessment using one honors biology classes with a total of 23 students, the statistics are as followed:
Mean Score= 90.487 Median Score= 92 High Score= 102 Low Score= 71 Mode: 90 (3 times)
Based on this information, I have compared the relative performance by gender in this same class:
Statistics separated by Gender
Mean Score= 88.8- Girls / 93.625 -Boys
High Score= 102 -Girls / 102 -Boys
Low Score= 72 -Girls / 71- Boys
Looking at these statistics, the total of number of girls are almost double the amount of males in my classroom which may render biased test scores. However, all of my classes are primarily made up of girls so using this class as an indicator was my best choice as my other classes are smaller.
I believe the circle of friends and seating in the classroom also plays a factor in the scores. Most of the students spend time together studying outside of school and those who have the high and low grades tend to study together. Knowing this, before each test, I suggest studying with new groups of students outside of school and to be fair during a review game prior to the test as each student has the opportunity to get some bonus points, I break up the groups to form heterogeneous groups by counting out 1-5 for a total of five tables with different levels of students.
Good.
14. Describe any ways in which you involved students in self-assessment. How did you communicate what you learned from your informal and formal assessments to your students? What did they do with this information?
Students always have the opportunity to be involved in self-assessment whether it is sharing their work with one another to evaluate each others or having a 10-15 minute conference to show off the project or work completed, students are required to choose their top three pieces of student work in this case the storybooks. When the top three were picked from each class, each day leading up to the test, I read one of the stories aloud during the last five minutes of class. This was an opportunity to recognize outstanding student work but also allow students to benefit from studying the materials and concepts for a test.
In addition, after an informal or formal assessment I provide feedback to students both verbally as a class indicating common mistakes, or what students did particularly well with. When I am circulating, I tend to give students the thumbs up or little nudges or comments based on their work on a recent assessment. In written form, I always spend much of my time offering feedback either on the assessment itself or oversized post-it which I attach to the assessment.
In some cases, when the students perform lower than they typically do, I ask to see them after class to find out what happened, what did they have trouble with, why the scores were lower or why didn't they turn in an informal assignment all together. Depending on the reason and the student, I often create ways for students to have an opportunity to earn additional credit to balance out a lower grade if it is unusual for that student (perhaps they had an offday). Again, this isn't the norm, however, there are some circumstances that render this action.
15. Important: Compare your objectives for student learning (both in terms of science concepts and practices) to the student learning you observed. What did you learn about your teaching based on the student performances? What will you do differently next time? Why would you make these changes? What, if anything, will you do to improve the assessment instruments?**
During this unit, I took the opportunity to take one of the more relevant topics in biology and interesting in my opinion and make as many real world connections and apply the information to the fullest extent particularly for bacteria and viruses as students have all encountered either one at one point in their life. I wanted students to make the link between topics of biology as in order to understand viruses are non-living we have to rely on the information they learned about during the beginning weeks of school when learning about the characteristics of living things. When learning about the bacterium cell, students had to rely on the information they previously learned when studying muliticellular organisms (Animal cells) during the first quarter. When talking about antibiotic resistance, students had to rely on the information they learned about during the evolution unit when discussing natural selection and speciation.
Next, I wanted students to have to apply this information. For viruses, students had to do their own research using technology to create CDC fact sheets about an individual virus. Involved in the research, they discovered the anatomy of a virus, the shape of a virus, different modes of transmission, diagnoses, the different between signs and symptoms, and what type of nucleic acid the virus contained, how it replicated and how it was treated. I created this one activity that would allow students to research a virus of their choice while hitting all of the objectives and concepts they had to learn about which was more effective than lecturing or having them outline the chapter. After the students were done with their 2 page CDC fact sheet, I compiled each fact sheet into a medical reference book and made a copy for each table. The next class periods, students engaged in a group assessment (Counted as a quiz), in which they were given actual medical/hospital admission charts for patients (Faux) and the students had to diagnose the patient using the medical reference book they all created. All abilities were able to succeed, they practiced acting like a Doctor to gain real world experience and more so, they utilized their problem solving skills while taking a performance based assessment.
??? I was looking forward to reading the rest of your answer....Let me know if you add anything.- fogleman May 17, 2010
Next, students had moved on t
Formal and Informal Assessment of Student Learning
Name: Ashley E. Borden, Spring 2010
I. Assignment Description/Requirements
II. Preparation / Development
1. Reflect on your current assessment practices. How have you been determining what students understand and what they are able to do?
A. Journal Entries: All students have Biology journal which is kept in the classroom at all times. When assigned, students are required to complete a journal entry in a proper format which includes the date, the entry number, the title of assignment, the questions asked and the student responses. Depending on the lesson, I will assign a journal entry to open the lesson which requires students to think about new ideas, make connections, break down misconceptions or serve as a retrieval cue to assess prior knowledge. At other times, I used journals at the end of a lesson or the very beginning of the next class to ask questions (high level thinking questions that they can not find the answers to in a book or notes) in order to assess students to determine that all students understand. These journals are reviewed briefly after each assignment in order to determine which students require additional help on a topic. After a total of 5 journal entries have been recorded, I assign a grade out of 15 points (5 for set up/completeness, 10 pts for quality of responses). It is important to note that I do not use the journals every day a I believe in continuously changing the classroom activity and routine.
B. Higher Level Questioning/Class Dicussions: Whether I am facilitating a lab, activity, jigsaw activity or giving students a brief set of foundational notes, I am continuously generating a series of questions to ask during each lesson. I make sure that when a question is asked, I allow a standard wait time of 5-7 seconds per student. If a student does not respond, I may reword the question in a leading manner to help the student generate some ideas. I encourage students to speak freely and to feel safe giving some sort of response even if it is not correct. There is no shame in trying. If all students are stumped, I allow students to "pair and share" which allows students to ask for help from their classmates. This creates a safe learning environment, allows for peer tutoring but also the opportunity from a teacher's point of view to informally assess all students even those who are not called on immediately as I circulate the room.
C. Lab or Activity Packets & Homework Assignments: My classroom is student-centered. During the unit, I try to keep the amount of notes that I provide to a minimum of 45 minutes broken down over a series of days which gives the students just enough foundation information. My philosophy is to have students create a product or engage in a hands-on activity completed in small, heterogeneous groups. When one of the assignments are completed, we have a class discussion/reflection session based on what they have learned and I collect the material. I do not believe in just checking it for completion as I will not get the quality of work that I expect from my students. I do, however, provide feedback for each and every student. This is graded as a typically on a scale 1-5. Depending on the type of project or activity and depth of knowledge required, I will at times grade the assignment as a quiz grade.
D. Quizes, Projects and Tests: During my time student teaching, I have created a series of short and longer formative assessments including quizzes, tests and projects. At times, I will count a longer activity as a quiz grade. I will often quiz students when there is a longer unit to ensure they understand one topic before moving onto another topic in a longer unit. I have assigned a quarter project which is "at home" work and is lengthy & complex in nature. My tests are always self-generated and include a variety of multiple choice, short answer and essay. In my opinion, my formal assessments vary in DOKs and allow a diversity of learners to succeed by having the opportunity to achieve using different formats. The quizzes are often 10 questions. The tests are typically 25-30 questions maximum. Before each test, I go over my expectations for the type of short/long answer responses to ensure students do not give me the bare minimum and expect to receive a fair grade.
I heartily agree with many of the points of your answers. You should be aware, however that I have corrected more than 10 misspellings on the paragraphs above. When editing text, You should consider using a browser that underlines misspellings as you write, e.g. Firefox. As you know, correct spelling is extremely important for a teacher because it serves for parents as an indicator of overall intelligence and the care you put into your work.
2. Describe the concept(s) that you are trying to assess in these assignments. Include a link to the appropriate GSE(s) on RIScienceTeachers. Be sure to include in your description your definition, examples of what it is, why students have difficulty with this concept, and why it is important that you teach this topic:
Concepts Addressed:
As part of the 10th grade biology curriculum at North Kingstown High School, a unit on microorganisms must be addressed which covers the four different kingdoms: Eubacteria, Archaebacteria, Protista and Fungi. The first concept/topic addressed in the unit was bacteria. The driving questions for this topic were generated by each individual class and were as such:
1. Are bacteria more evolved than more complex organisms such as humans?
2. What roles does bacteria play in our own lives/society (Friend or Foe)?
3. How do humans alter the pace of evolution via natural selection in terms of antibiotic resistance?
Excellent questions.
In order to address these concepts, students had to gain foundational information about the kingdom including the cell structure, role of organelles, and modes of reproduction (Asexual and sexual). In order to do this, students used a variety of sources including their textbook to gather information about bacteria in order to create a story book or comic/cartoon targeted to a fifth grade audience. Students were required to learn new concepts, make connections and synthesize and apply the newly learned information in such a way that a younger audience would be able to comprehend. By doing this, the students were fully engaged in a self-directed learning, project-based learning and peer-tutoring while I facilitated the activity.
APPLICABLE RI GSEs
LS (9-11) -1
Students demonstrate understanding of structure and function-survival requirements by…
1a explaining the relationships between and amongst the specialized structures of the cell and their functions (e.g. transport of materials, energy transfer, protein building, waste disposal, information feedback, and even movement).
1b explaining that most multicellular organisms have specialized cells to survive, while unicellular organisms perform all survival functions. (e.g. nerve cells communicate with other cells, muscle cells contract, unicellular are not specialized).
LS (9-11) -8
Students demonstrate an understanding of Natural Selection/ evolution by…
8a illustrating that when an environment changes, the survival advantage /disadvantage of some characteristics may change.
8b distinguish between microevolution (on small scale within a single population –e.g., change in gene frequency within a population) and macroevolution (on a scale that transcends boundaries of a single species – e.g., diversity of all beetle species within the order of insects) and explain how macroevolution accounts for speciation and extinction.
8c recognizing patterns in molecular and fossil evidence, to provide a scientific explanation for Natural Selection and its evolutionary consequences (e.g. survival, adaptation).
LS (9-11) -9
Students demonstrate an understanding of how humans are affected by environmental factors and/or heredity by …
9a researching scientific information to explain how such things as radiation, chemicals, and other factors can cause gene mutations or disease.
9b providing an explanation of how the human species impacts the environment and other organisms (e.g. reducing the amount of the earth’s surface available to those other species, interfering with their food sources, changing the temperature and chemical composition of their habitats, introducing foreign species into their ecosystems, and altering organisms directly through selective breeding and genetic engineering).
Important Information that Students need to Know before addressing these concepts:
Why is it important for students to learn about these concepts:
3. (and 7) Describe an informal assessment that you selected, modified, or designed to address this concept. Summarize the instructions you gave your students and Include a link to the informal assessment here as well.
The informal assessment that I designed allowed students to engage in project-based learning by creating a story/picture book or a comic/cartoon for a fifth grade science class who was learning about bacteria. In the story book or comic, students must be able to draw and label a bacteria cell, describe the three different shapes of bacteria cells, describe the function of each organelle by using analogies comparing them to items that a fifth-grader would be familiar with.
Please find the instructions by clicking on this link:
Comic Book Strip.doc
- Details
- Download
- 33 KB
4 (and 8) Create a Formal Assessment. Describe the assessment, including concepts, types of items, and how it was assessed. Include a link to the copy of the assessment as well.
Concepts being addressed:
Test Format- 18 questions total
- 1 Graph Interpretation (8 pts)
- 6 Multi-part short response questions (42 pts total-each weighed separately)
Note: Its important to note that I purposely reduced the number of multiple choice questions so students could concentrate on their short answer responses given that some classes only had 45 minutes to take this chapter test.SAMPLE:
5. Develop the evaluation criteria (or key) for your formal assessment or link it hereGood job on the test and key.
7 & 8: Already Addressed Above.
9. For your information assessment, upload scans of work of three or four students. The work of each student should be on a different page. At the bottom of each students page, you should describe the level of student understanding, e.g. high, average, low and describe how it is indicated in its answers.
Low Performing Student Work
Average Performing Student Work
High Performing Student Work
It would have been interesting to read your explanation of how you assessed each example and they taught you about your teaching.
10. For you formal assessment, describe how you think it addressed the concepts you were trying to assess? How did you modify the assessment to address learning differences or special needs?
During each lesson through out the unit, I immediately created several test questions based on the actual lesson, class discussion and length we covered a topic. When the unit was complete, I had a bank of test questions that varied between DOK 1- DOK 4 high level thinking questions where students had to compare/contrast, distinguish between a virus and bacteria cell in order to get a question correct, think back through several projects including the bacteria story book, bacteria uses presentation, Diagnosing a patient (Virus) project, and antibiotic resistance lab. I am pleased with the assessment and feel that although a shorter test, it covers the material that I think is most relevant for students.
This test was designed for my three honors level classes. No handwritten modifications were necessary, however, for my college-prep biology class, I had converted some of the short answer questions into multiple choice as we didn't go into such depth on topics like antibiotic resistance as I had lost 1 full class period due to in school activities being held during that period.
I like your strategy of using the same test for both levels. It would be interesting for you to compare the box and whiskers plot of the two levels of students to see if the populations are truly distinct.
III. Analysis / Reflection
11. Use both the informal and formal assessments to describe what you learned about what your students understand about these concepts. Use specific examples from both the informal and formal assessment to illustrate your points. What can your students do now that they could not before, and what do they still need to learn?
By watching my students complete these tasks in combination with grading the assessments, I have learned several things from my students. First when given the informal assessment, I got a lot of complaints and groaning about "Why do we have to do this, I cant do this, I don't get what I am suppose to do" but once the students got into the story book activity, they thoroughly enjoyed it. All students used unique sets of analogies to describe the organelles or bacteria along with the processes of reproduction. Students had relied on the previous knowledge from learning about some of the organelles when talking about an animal cell during the first quarter.
One concept that most students including the average and high performing student struggled with is that when a bacteria cells uses conjugation to reproduce, they assumed that once the genetic material was exchanged through the pillus, a new bacteria cell formed much like human sexual reproduction. However, after reviewing these assessments, I was able to clarify and show a 2 minute clip under a scope of bacterial conjugation so they would understand that conjugation does not necessarily result in the formation of a new bacteria cell but rather the bacteria cells have greater genetic diversity due to the exchange of information which allows them to adapt and become more resistant.
This is a good example of the importance of formative assessment.
Through the informal assessment, students were able to practice and improve the skill of making connections between new content material and information they are already familiar with. For example, they learned about the three shapes of bacteria: Cocci (Round), Baccillis (Rod) and Sprillum (Sprial) which they compared to the shape of pasta as well as other common objects.
It is important to note that after this activity and during the labs that followed, students would say "I know this stuff better than anything else because I put the concepts into words that I would understand." This held true for the formal assessment as the test grades had increased on average by 12 points. Whether the test format was different or students were more interested in the topic as it may be more relevant than others, there was still a huge improvement that I am pleased with.
Good.
In the formal assessment, students proved that they were able to clearly distinguish between a virus and bacteria through methods of treatment, structure and composition. Furthermore, students proved to successfully read a graph and make inferences based on the given information. Most importantly, students proved to have learned how to take the concepts they learned about through activities and labs, critically think and transfer that information into a well supported argument (i.e. bacteria cells are more evolved than humans).
It looks like this project/test allowed you to use your own knowledge of and interest in evolution. Nicely done.
Students still have to improve their skill of writing out cohesive (coherent?) responses during a short-answer test. Students are apt to write an answer quickly based on what pops into their brains, however, if they had just taken the time to outline what they wanted to write to put together a detailed paragraph or two answering the questions and giving examples, all student responses could have been well-written aside from the to twenty students out of all three classes.
How will you address this in your future classes?
12. OMIT PER ASSIGNMENT
13. For your formal assessment only, select one student characteristic, e.g. ability, gender, age, etc) and compare the relative performance of each group. Hint: Use box and whiskers plots to compare the two groups. What do you conclude from this comparison? Why?
For the formal assessment using one honors biology classes with a total of 23 students, the statistics are as followed:
Mean Score= 90.487 Median Score= 92 High Score= 102 Low Score= 71 Mode: 90 (3 times)
Based on this information, I have compared the relative performance by gender in this same class:
Statistics separated by Gender
Mean Score= 88.8- Girls / 93.625 -Boys
High Score= 102 -Girls / 102 -Boys
Low Score= 72 -Girls / 71- Boys
Looking at these statistics, the total of number of girls are almost double the amount of males in my classroom which may render biased test scores. However, all of my classes are primarily made up of girls so using this class as an indicator was my best choice as my other classes are smaller.
I believe the circle of friends and seating in the classroom also plays a factor in the scores. Most of the students spend time together studying outside of school and those who have the high and low grades tend to study together. Knowing this, before each test, I suggest studying with new groups of students outside of school and to be fair during a review game prior to the test as each student has the opportunity to get some bonus points, I break up the groups to form heterogeneous groups by counting out 1-5 for a total of five tables with different levels of students.
Good.
14. Describe any ways in which you involved students in self-assessment. How did you communicate what you learned from your informal and formal assessments to your students? What did they do with this information?
Students always have the opportunity to be involved in self-assessment whether it is sharing their work with one another to evaluate each others or having a 10-15 minute conference to show off the project or work completed, students are required to choose their top three pieces of student work in this case the storybooks. When the top three were picked from each class, each day leading up to the test, I read one of the stories aloud during the last five minutes of class. This was an opportunity to recognize outstanding student work but also allow students to benefit from studying the materials and concepts for a test.
In addition, after an informal or formal assessment I provide feedback to students both verbally as a class indicating common mistakes, or what students did particularly well with. When I am circulating, I tend to give students the thumbs up or little nudges or comments based on their work on a recent assessment. In written form, I always spend much of my time offering feedback either on the assessment itself or oversized post-it which I attach to the assessment.
In some cases, when the students perform lower than they typically do, I ask to see them after class to find out what happened, what did they have trouble with, why the scores were lower or why didn't they turn in an informal assignment all together. Depending on the reason and the student, I often create ways for students to have an opportunity to earn additional credit to balance out a lower grade if it is unusual for that student (perhaps they had an offday). Again, this isn't the norm, however, there are some circumstances that render this action.
15. Important: Compare your objectives for student learning (both in terms of science concepts and practices) to the student learning you observed. What did you learn about your teaching based on the student performances? What will you do differently next time? Why would you make these changes? What, if anything, will you do to improve the assessment instruments?**
During this unit, I took the opportunity to take one of the more relevant topics in biology and interesting in my opinion and make as many real world connections and apply the information to the fullest extent particularly for bacteria and viruses as students have all encountered either one at one point in their life. I wanted students to make the link between topics of biology as in order to understand viruses are non-living we have to rely on the information they learned about during the beginning weeks of school when learning about the characteristics of living things. When learning about the bacterium cell, students had to rely on the information they previously learned when studying muliticellular organisms (Animal cells) during the first quarter. When talking about antibiotic resistance, students had to rely on the information they learned about during the evolution unit when discussing natural selection and speciation.
Next, I wanted students to have to apply this information. For viruses, students had to do their own research using technology to create CDC fact sheets about an individual virus. Involved in the research, they discovered the anatomy of a virus, the shape of a virus, different modes of transmission, diagnoses, the different between signs and symptoms, and what type of nucleic acid the virus contained, how it replicated and how it was treated. I created this one activity that would allow students to research a virus of their choice while hitting all of the objectives and concepts they had to learn about which was more effective than lecturing or having them outline the chapter. After the students were done with their 2 page CDC fact sheet, I compiled each fact sheet into a medical reference book and made a copy for each table. The next class periods, students engaged in a group assessment (Counted as a quiz), in which they were given actual medical/hospital admission charts for patients (Faux) and the students had to diagnose the patient using the medical reference book they all created. All abilities were able to succeed, they practiced acting like a Doctor to gain real world experience and more so, they utilized their problem solving skills while taking a performance based assessment.
??? I was looking forward to reading the rest of your answer....Let me know if you add anything.-
Next, students had moved on t